Paul Goble
Staunton, July 14 – One of the difficulties in keeping track of where Vladimir Putin is actually heading is that the statistics available are often inconsistent, with some pointing in one direction and others pointing in just the reverse. So it is with the Kremlin leader’s much-ballyhooed focus on the North.
According to the annual Indicators of Science volume prepared by the Higher School of Education in cooperation with the Ministry of Science, the number of research institutes in the Arctic zone of Russia increased from 72 to 92 between 2016 and 2020 (issek.hse.ru/mirror/pubs/share/581310357.pdf).
But the same source shows that the number of people working in this expanded network in fact fell over the same period from 1835 to 1739. To be sure, part of this decline may be the result of the pandemic; and the appearance of new institutes may create the framework for future expansion. However, up to now, that has not happened.
Instead, in the best tradition of Soviet pokazuka, Moscow is creating what are in fact hollowed out organizations to make one claim when the more important numbers do not support its contention.
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